After their last disappointing meeting Brigitte thinks that everyone is feeling frustrated. They watch the news, only to feel disgusted at the complete lack of action from any other nations. They train, hoping to burn off some of the excess frustration and hone their teamwork.
Winston seems to have taken "preparing for an eventual intervention" seriously, because with Genji now back on the team, simulations crank into overdrive.
Brigitte hadn't realized how badly they needed another attack specialist until that first sim after his arrival. Genji rounds out their offense, turning them from an efficient team into a well-oiled machine . She has never seen anything like Genji in action - his skill is another thing she thought Reinhardt might have been exaggerating - but after seeing him parry countless projectiles, scale walls, spring lightly over the heads of 'bots and down tens more with a hail of shuriken she's convinced; he's an honest-to-God ninja .
More than once in the first couple runs with him she's been hit by 'bot fire, distracted by watching him dart and dash like across the battlefield. Gradually she became used to it, only noticing him when he dives behind her shield for cover between salvos.
While she has gotten used to Genji, his guests are another story. She hardly ever sees Hanzo; the archer does not join them for meals, though she and Reinhardt save back a plate for him each time. If he has been given quarters within the Watchpoint she doesn't know where they are, she never sees him coming or going from a room. Glimpses of him are rare, he moves like a wraith among them. Sometimes she catches the tail of his golden ribbon whipping around a corner, or spies a slim gunmetal heel disappearing through a door. Most often she will spy a pale face watching them through the window during sims, but he's gone by the time they finish.
Zenyatta is much more apparent. The omnic does join them for meals, though of course he doesn't eat. He floats amid the conversation, saying little but watching them with what Brigitte thinks could be a placid smile. Some mornings when she and Reinhardt are sparring, she catches a glimpse of him and Genji sitting together on a far-off cliff, watching the gulls rise and fall on the morning breeze.
She still isn't sure what to make of the omnic. He's engaged her once or twice in conversation, learning far more from her than she gleans from him. He's pleasant enough, but almost as enigmatic as Hanzo. Zenyatta does not stay to watch their simulations.
Life falls back into a routine on the Watchpoint. Two weeks pass, bringing them to mid-October. The temperature is plummeting, the days becoming shorter and soon it is too chilly for them to spar outside in the mornings. The green of the grass is fading toward dormancy, ridging the cliffs in sparse brown tufts. The sky, once a vibrant blue, tends toward a steely gray. Reinhardt reminisces about how years ago winters scarcely fell below 60 and he could sunbathe year-round.
Brigitte wonders if these weather anomalies are spurred by the one Mei has been studying, and then she wonders how the climatologist is faring. There's been no word from her since Winston's announcement.
It's been ten weeks since Winston's recall and a month since she's joined Overwatch. Days at the Watchpoint are enjoyable, filled with food, hard work and great companionship. Despite this she feels stuck - chomping at the bit to do something. She knows that everyone else feels the same, but they're doing a better job of hiding it than she is.
Brigitte throws herself into her projects, setting her sights on something ambitious so she has something to do with all this spare energy. It's going to be a surprise for Reinhardt; she's trying to construct a completely new set of Crusader armor, inlaid with the newest version of particle field generators that will project an energy field around the whole of his body. She's consults with her father on the best way to construct the armor; she wants to recess all the generators, which will doubtless introduce flaws into the metal unless strategically planned. She spends so much time in the workshop that Reinhardt begins to notice and come by, so she cuts back and tries to find other things to occupy the hours.
One day Lúcio tries to teach her some basic DJing, much to the amusement of anyone who walks by his partially-open door.
"No, no, not like that!" Lúcio shakes his head, dreads flying as she removes her hand from the vinyl emulator. She's just finished her third attempt at "scratching" to one of his tracks, and it hadn't sounded much better than the first two attempts.
"You have to give yourself to the rhythm!" Lúcio insists, queuing up another track, "And right now you're resisting. Here-" he places his hand over the top of hers, one finger tapping slightly to the beat as the old song fades into the new, "-can you feel that?"
The new track has a bass pulse, deep enough that it thrums through her chest. She nods, knowing what he'll say next. She has to "feel the beat, and then use it as a springboard to time her scratches"; she's tried that though, she really has. The problem is that when she gets going she has a tendency to forget to keep track of the rhythm.
"Lemme try and put it a different way," he says, head bobbing thoughtfully along the the music, "think about it like - it's a fight. The beat is the other guy's hits-" he used his free hand to pantomime a punching fist "-and you gotta react with a block." He presses his fingers down on hers and pulls back on the faux-vinyl just as the beat drops again, producing a scratch just after each pulse. He continues until she takes the hint and begins trying to time it on her own.
"Once you get the hang of blocking his normal punches, it gets too easy right? Then you mix it up, throw a few of your own and a roundhouse kick when he's least expecting it," Lúcio's fingers take over again, pulling the record in a series of scratches that dance around the bass in a jagged counter-rhythm, "see?"
"I think I do," she says, and means it. It's a headspace, one she finds herself in nearing the end of sparring. Where each block and hit have become so instinctive, it's more like a dance than a fight.
She begins again, scratching first on the off-beat, as he had done. Once she gets that under her fingers she tries some more complicated scrubs, unconsciously nodding her head to the beat to keep in time.
"Yeah, now you're getting it!" Lúcio encourages, and brings his right hand around to rest on hers where it sits curled on top of his mixer. "And when you got that, then you can really play around!" He manipulates her fingers so that they move up and down the sliders, introducing new and vibrant overtones that blend with the melody. It takes all her concentration to keep scratching with her left hand, so much that she doesn't even notice the door being pushed open behind them.
"Well, don't this just beat all?"
McCree's voice is a warm, indistinct rumble. Lúcio hastily jums away from her and turns down the volume; Brigitte hadn't realized how loud they were being until just then.
"Sorry, what?" She says, turning to face him. Next to her Lúcio edges away, the faintest hint if color darkening his cheeks. Is he embarrassed that they were being so noisy?
"Oh, nothin'. Just checkin' to see what all the ruckus was." The gunslinger grins wryly at them, thumbs tucked into his belt loops. "Think I c'n give that a try?"
McCree is, if possible, even worse than her. She tries to stifle her giggles at the attempt, but when he starts pushing random sound effect buttons she and Lúcio lose it.
"Man, I should take you on tour with me," Lúcio snickers as McCree sets off a series of explosion sounds, "you can open for one of my concerts!"
"Hey! What about me?" Brigitte says, feigning a pout at being left out.
"Fine, you can come too. You can be his backup dancer!"
McCree laughs as she puts Lúcio in a headlock, the shorter man unable to squirm out of her grip as she musses his hair. She only sets him free when he apologizes profusely, and when a loud ping interrupts the flow of music.
"Oh, that'll be an email." Lúcio reaches across McCree for his holopad and logs into his profile while Brigitte watches curiously. She didn't know it was possible to link the two; she'd be a lot better about checking her own email if she did that…
"Winston's calling another meeting tonight " Lúcio says, scrolling quickly through the message, "Regarding the recall and former agents of Overwatch...and he says expect it to be longer than the last few meetings. Tonight, 6:30."
Another meeting? For it to come so soon after the last one it has to be something pretty important. Doubly so if he's calling it with less than a day's warning. Are they perhaps going to get an influx of veterans from before?
McCree groans. "Aw man, another meetin'? Them things'r duller'n ditchwater. "
Brigitte checks her watch - about 40 minutes til sims start at 2, then dinner and the meeting. That means there won't be any time after dinner for her to work in the shop; she'll have to try to squeeze any work in now.
"Sorry guys, gotta go!" She waves an abrupt goodbye and beats a hasty retreat to the workshop. There she fiddles with the rough plans for Reinhardt's new armor; having neither the materials to cast it yet (she should really figure out how she's going to get those) nor the perfect solution to her problem. Recesses in the armor…
She sketches a few shapes, trying to come up with an idea. The weakest points of armor are usually the joints, where they pieces come together. Those also are the places she does not want put the generators, as the particle fields will naturally assume a planar shape once active, and having a constantly-moving base will distorted and possibly break the field. The best shape for armor she's come up with so far is so terribly block y, like fighting clad in cardboard boxes.
She fights with the design until five minutes til, and then heads to the second range for sims. Today they're supposed to be working on a larger-scale bot assault, with the goal of working as two smaller teams approaching a central spawn point.
As she hurtles down the two flights of stairs that lead to the landing of the ranges, she swings around the last corner and almost smacks straight into Hanzo.
"Oh!" Brigitte blurts in surprise, twisting around so that she can avoid him. She grabs for the stair rail, nearly pulling her shoulder out of it's socket just to avoid a fall.
"Sorry….uh," she sputters, unsure of what to call him. Mr. Shimada? Hanzo? Isn't there some formality of address in Japanese society? She turns her uncertainty into an apology instead. "Didn't mean to almost run you over."
"It would do you well to be more cautious when wearing that much armor," he rebukes in a regal rasp. Even though he's shorter than her he somehow manages to make her feel small.
"Yeah, sorry!" She forces herself to sound cheerfully apologetic instead of pissed off. "Just running late for sims."
Hanzo breathes a hn, turns away and begins to head up the stairs.
"You know, you could join us if you want. We could always use a sniper," Brigitte says to his retreating back. She's not sure what's possessed her to say it. Maybe the fact that she wants him to know she's seen him watching them, or the desire to throw him for a loop. It could be her impression of Genji; if one brother was so skilled, surely the other is too.
His step falters for just a second, but he continues on his way.
Hanzo doesn't look in on them practicing that day.
Dinner is a Tex-mex concoction of McCree's design, and Reinhardt's execution. They take the finished product to their war room to make the meeting a little more palatable, though as soon as she goes to take her first bite, Brigitte drips salsa onto her lap.
Customarily Winston will consult his pad, open with the topics of discussion and then go down the list. Today, he doesn't even have his pad out. He hasn't taken a plate either; instead he sits with his hands folded on the table, looking serious.
"So, I'm sorry for springing this meeting on you all with such short notice," he says. "Normally I would wait until next week, but Athena and I have discovered something I think warrants some attention."
"As you know, when I sent the recall out I sent the message to all former members of Overwatch. I didn't expect that everyone would answer. That being said, the number of agents who have acknowledged the call has been far lower than what I predicted."
Winston presses the button of a remote that Brigitte hadn't noticed clutched in his massive hand. In the center of the table a holo-surface is projected, showing percentages, trend lines and even pie chart.
Brigitte goggles; this sort of detailed analysis is something she can barely make sense of. A quick glance over at Reinhardt has him not even looking at the data points, just watching Winston. This must be a regular thing then.
"Including everyone her who answered the recall as well as Mei, it accounts for approximately 5.6% of all former agents who have acknowledged the message." Winston is in full-on lecture mode now, using a laser pointer to point out a pie chart.
"Based on the time between the last contact with members as well as the speed and frequency at which you all answered, I predicted that anywhere between 50-70% of former agents would respond in one form or another. Even just to decline participation. However, this number is astonishingly low."
Brigitte had been wondering why there were no other agents about. The number of Watchpoints there were, combined with what she knew of Overwatch's previous missions made it sound like their numbers had been in the hundreds.
"As you know, what prompted me to send out the recall was the attack here. Talon agents attempted to steal sensitive data from Athena's servers; they were after the locations and identities of the agents. I was able to stop them from stealing everything, but unfortunately they still managed to obtain a portion."
Winston clicks the remote again, and this time the data charts flicker away to turn into an array of digital news clippings. The text on them is too small for her to read from here, but one of them looks suspiciously like an obituary.
"I can only think that there's one reason that Talon would want this information. It's taken some time, but Athena and I have tried to track down all the members whose information was stolen. Of them, over a quarter have...they've…" Winston's voice, which up until now has been formal, if not a little aloof starts to change. Brigitte can hear the heavy tremor of emotion; it raises the hair on the back of her neck. She feels a strange wave of dread.
"They've...well, they've either disappeared, or been killed."